NFL players, commissioner regret playing after JFK's death

Detroit Lions' Nick Pietrosante, left, and Wayne Walker, right, stand during ceremonies honoring slain President John F. Kennedy, before their game against the Minnesota Vikings at Metropolitian Stadium in Minneapolis, on November 24, 1963.

Former Vikings quarterback Fran Tarkenton played in 257 career regular-season and playoff games. Never did he experience anything like the one 50 years ago.

It was Sunday, Nov. 24, 1963, two days after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

After consulting with Kennedy press secretary Pierre Salinger the day of the assassination, Commissioner Pete Rozelle decided the NFL should play on. Rozelle would later call that the biggest mistake of his 29 years in office.

So the third-year Vikings took the field against Detroit at Metropolitan Stadium in one of seven NFL games played that day.

Advertisement

There was a moment of silence before the game, and then fans were asked to sing along to the national anthem. Just in case anybody didn’t know the words, printed lyric sheets had been distributed.

The flag flew at half staff. “Auld Lang Syne” was played at halftime.

But what Tarkenton, the Vikings quarterback and eventual Pro Football Hall of Famer, mostly remembers from that day isn’t anything he heard. It’s what he didn’t hear.

“It was an eerie, eerie atmosphere,” Tarkenton said. “I never played a game like that in my life because it was just so silent. No loud screaming. It was like a ghost town. I don’t think much was said between the players. It was just very somber, very unemotional.”

Play or don’t play?

From a purely football standpoint, the 28,763 fans on hand would have had reason to get excited. That afternoon’s 34-31 win marked the first time the Vikings ever had beaten the Lions after five straight defeats.

Nevertheless, there was silence. The sky on that 25-degree day added to the gloominess.

“It was very overcast, very dark, very bleak,” Tarkenton said. “It kind of fit the mood of the weekend.”

Still, Tarkenton was able to shine. He completed 16 of 24 passes for 261 yards and a touchdown. He led a fourth-quarter touchdown drive that culminated in a 2-yard run by Tommy Mason and a 34-31 lead.

Cox was a rookie that season and went on to become Minnesota’s all-time leading scorer with 1,365 points in 15 years. He believed the NFL was wrong to play two days after Kennedy was assassinated Nov. 22, 1963 — 50 years ago Friday.

“I didn’t think we should have played at the time, and I still think that,” Cox said. “You have to remember the world was different then. We didn’t have any choice. If they said there is a game, we were going to play. But when the president of the United States gets killed, I don’t think it was appropriate for us to play.”

Fred Zamberletti, then the Vikings trainer and now the team’s historian, agrees the games should have been canceled, citing “respect for the president and his family.” But Zamberletti, also echoing Cox, said nobody on the Vikings in that era would have dared question taking the field.

Vikings center Mick Tingelhoff, tackle Grady Alderman and linebacker Roy Winston all said it was not a mistake for the NFL to play. Tingelhoff even said he thought “everybody wanted to play” on the Vikings.

“It was a terrible thing that happened, but life goes on,” Winston said. “I don’t feel like we did something wrong. The United States is all about freedom and everything and, my gosh, we were just doing what we were doing for a living then.”

Tarkenton said he doesn’t “really have any opinion” about whether the NFL should have played. But he said taking the field “didn’t disrespect the president.”

The rival AFL postponed that weekend’s games and was widely applauded for it. When the NFL was faced with another major national crisis, the 9-11 terrorist bombings in 2011, the league did shut down temporarily.

“At a certain point, playing our games will contribute to the healing process,” Commissioner Paul Tagliabue said at the time. “But not this week.”

‘Like a relative dying’

The day Kennedy was assassinated, Tarkenton remembers, he went to the morning practice at Midway Stadium in St. Paul and then had lunch with Alderman and Tingelhoff. He heard about the shooting on his car radio on his way home from the restaurant.

“It was absolutely startling,” Tarkenton said. “I was so stunned. I couldn’t get away from the television the rest of the day.”

Alderman heard the news from his wife when he got home. “It was almost like a relative dying,” he said.

Defensive end Jim Marshall remembers being in downtown Minneapolis.

“I was standing in a gun shop on Hennepin Avenue when I heard,” he said. “I just happened to be looking at some guns. I was totally shocked. The president of the United States assassinated — I was totally shocked.”

The Vikings at least knew they would be home that weekend, whether the game was played or not. About 700 miles east in Detroit, Lions players weren’t sure for a while whether they would travel to Minnesota.

Although the NFL announced Friday the games would go on, just not televised, Lions wide receiver Gail Cogdill and backup quarterback Milt Plum remember some uncertainty remained.

“We got a call from the Lions (on Nov. 22), and they told everybody to come into the office early on Saturday,” Cogdill said. “When we got there, the NFL was still trying to figure out whether we were going to have a game. So we just waited around for a while, and nobody really said much. Finally, we got an answer that we were going to play, and we took off.”

It wasn’t much of a performance by the Lions. They fumbled six times, losing all of them to tie an NFL record for lost fumbles.

Then again, the Vikings weren’t much better in the sloppy affair. They lost four of their six fumbles, and Tarkenton threw an interception.

“We were like a rusty wheel,” Cogdill said of Detroit’s showing. “We were playing at about 85 percent. I think when something like that happens, it does affect you. I think it affected us more because we had to travel. It was a Bad Day at Black Rock.”

Alderman remembers talking to some Lions players at the Pro Bowl following the season about that game.

“They thought it was a mistake to play,” Alderman said. “They didn’t want to be there.”

On the contrary, said Cogdill, who made that Pro Bowl; he said it was not a mistake. And he was a Kennedy supporter, having visited the White House in 1962. He even sat in Kennedy’s chair in the Oval Office, although the president was away at the time.

Cogdill never did meet him.

Oswald murdered

When the Lions finally did get to Metropolitan Stadium for the game, it soon was overshadowed by more historic news. At 11:20 a.m., a little more than two hours before the 1:35 p.m. kickoff, Kennedy’s alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was shot to death by Jack Ruby live on television from the Dallas jail.

“I saw it on TV,” Cox said. “We were getting ready to play. This might sound strange, but I remember thinking at the time that I didn’t think it was all that crazy. I was thinking this doesn’t surprise me that this happened.”

Zamberletti remembers a group of players and team personnel watching television in the locker room when Ruby shot Oswald.

“It was unbelievable,” Zamberletti said. “It was like we were watching a movie. To see something like that right in front of your eyes — you didn’t see much like that on TV in those days. When it happened, nobody said anything. Everybody was speechless.”

Soon, the Vikings had to play a game that had no postseason implications. The Lions were 4-6 and on their way to a 5-8-1 season, and the Vikings were 3-7 and also would finish 5-8-1.

Still, the game ended dramatically. The Lions weren’t interested in settling for a tie, and quarterback Earl Morrall hit Terry Barr on pass in the waning seconds. But the Vikings tackled Barr at the Minnesota 11 and wouldn’t let him get up before the clock ran out.

Fifty years ago, however, the game was essentially an afterthought.

The people who attended were less fans than mourners.

“The place was like a morgue,” said Plum. “That’s what I’ll always remember.”